The first No-drill hood struts for Fox Mustangs on the aftermarket. These aftermarket Mustang hood struts eliminate the factory hood prop rod and give you the clean, pleasing appearance every engine compartment deserves.

By Bill Tumas:
Although many new cars nowadays come with factory hood struts, for some reason the Mustang still gets saddled with an old school prop rod. Thankfully, as usual, the after market has a solution for us. This is the MRT Hood Strut kit for the '94-'04 Mustang. Unlike many of the kits on the market this one bolts on, doesn't require any drilling, no rivets, making it much easier for you to install.

The hood strut kit comes with six pieces, two struts, left and right-side hood brackets that are stamped, matching fender brackets, and detailed instructions. For this installation you'll need a quarter-inch ratchet, an eight millimeter socket, 10 millimeter socket, and if you need to remove the struts for any reason a small flathead screwdriver.

We'll be installing our MRT Hood Strut kit on this 1996 Mustang Cobra. Let's get started. Thankfully, this should be the last time we ever use this. We're going to start by installing the bracket on the fender. To do that, you'll need to remove this rear bolt. You want to make sure you grab the bracket labeled properly for the side of the car you're working on, in our case the right-hand. Place the bracket over the fender hole, make sure the stud for the strut is in the front, and tighten down the factory's bolt. Now we're going to install the bracket on the hood side. Step one, remove the nut from on the top stud. You want to loosen the lower nut just enough to get the bracket to slide underneath it. You want to make sure you keep the hood pressed down on the bracket, then you want to re-tighten the lower. Now we want to reinstall the top.

Now we're going to install the strut itself. You want make sure you install it with the body upward to make sure no water condensation gets inside the strut. Press it up against the ball and just push, it'll pop into place. In some cases, the strut might be a little below the stud. In that case, you'll just have to lower the hood down slightly to be able to press it on. Put our prop rod down, bring the hood and snap it in place. Now you want to repeat the process on the other side.

The last step is we're going to remove your factory prop rod. Since we never removed our hood from the hinges, there should be no alignment issues. Just to make sure, we're going to slowly pull our hood down to make sure that it lines up properly. Good on that side. Good on that side. Pull it up again. See with our hood struts how nice and easily the hood goes up.

The hood struts are a nice easy to install upgrade. Not only does it do a better job supporting our hood, it gets rid of the prop rod so if you're working on the engine it doesn't get in the way. The installation should take you no more than half an hour and you'll be back on the road in no time.